


stitching time

by ssstrychnine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11363304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: They are three women in a motel, that night. Persephone can see them in other places. Three women and a tree. Three women and a child. Two women in an attic. This does not bother her. They each draw cards and Persephone draws the magician and Maura draws the page of cups and Calla draws death.“Well, obviously,” says Persephone.“The hell it is,” says Calla, and she snatches her card back and disappears into the bathroom.“I think she likes you,” says Maura, and Persephone thinks she’s right.





	stitching time

On the night that Persephone Poldma finds Calla and Maura on an exit ramp in Virginia, she starts to knit. She thinks it’s something she ought to do, she sees frayed gloves and lumpy sweaters in her future, so she does what she’s told for once and knits a pair of socks out of fluffy grey wool. They are in a motel with three single beds and the Cadillac is gone, and the woman who drove it, but Calla and Maura are still there. Calla is pacing and cursing, tugging on her braids, heating up the room, and Maura is frowning and shuffling her deck, a quieter sort of worry, no less intense, just different. All of them know that this will be the only night they stay in this motel room. All of them know that there will be something far more important for them in the morning. Persephone gives the socks to Calla.

“You’re warm enough as is, but perhaps you need them anyway.”

“The hell I do,” says Calla, but she takes them, and folds them away in her bag.

They are three women in a motel, that night. Persephone can see them in other places. Three women and a tree. Three women and a child. Two women in an attic. This does not bother her. They each draw cards and Persephone draws the magician and Maura draws the page of cups and Calla draws death.

“Well, obviously,” says Persephone.

“The hell it is,” says Calla, and she snatches her card back and disappears into the bathroom.

“I think she likes you,” says Maura, and Persephone thinks she’s right.

There are times where Persephone feels herself slipping, falling through small cracks in time. It’s an occupational hazard, one that comes with having any sort of clairvoyance, a drop or an ocean, but Persephone thinks that perhaps she falls a little deeper than most. Or maybe she’s just better able to see to the core of it, the green roots, the bone marrow. In the motel and on the exit ramp she is two women. She is a young woman in a lavender dress and thigh high boots, a sequined bag over her arm, and she’s an older woman in a dress and falling down tights, drinking cherry cola. A woman in the middle of a road and a woman in the middle of two mirrors. She sees these things and she thinks,  _ oh well _ , and then she thinks,  _ perhaps I’ll knit a scarf next _ . 

300 Fox Way calls to them the way a young child might, when it loses sight of its parents, like it’s at knee level and everyone else is a thousand feet tall. The foundations ache for them and when they arrive, it quiets. It’s a small house, bright and bold and blue, and Calla knocks over the mailbox texting to see if it will withstand a kick from her steel-capped boots.

“You break it you bought it,” says Maura, and Calla cackles, and they co-sign a mortgage and move in that night. Maura makes something with butter and Calla makes something with bacon and sausage and Persephone makes a pecan pie.

They share a room for the first few months, unsure of their footing, unsure of who they are and where they are and why. Persephone can see herself in a room of her own, surrounded by papers and knitted things and half-living houseplants, but that will come later. Persephone sweeps dust from the attic where she will die and it floats down the stairs in whorls and loops. Maura puts her palm to a knot on the beech tree outside. Calla plays Cyndi Lauper so loudly the neighbours complain and then Persephone gives them pie and they are sated. They put up their sign out front and it just so happens that Henrietta is a place where psychics are in hot demand. None of them are surprised.

Persephone knits. Socks and then a scarf and then a pair of striped gloves that get a hole between thumb and forefinger when Maura puts them on the first time.

“When I teach your daughter, I’ll make sure she won’t repeat the error,” says Persephone, taking the glove back, looking at the stitches closely.

“Thanks for that,” says Maura, trying sarcasm and failing. She sounds resigned instead, like she’s already accepted this future, this daughter who will be taught how to knit. But that’s because a pregnancy test already confirmed it, five whole hours before Persephone did.

Calla stays in Persephone’s room sometimes, Persephone’s bed sometimes, under Persephone’s skin sometimes. It happens slowly, Calla touches her wrist, her waist, sits next to her when they’re doing readings, even when there are empty chairs. Persephone doesn’t touch her back, she knows that it’s something Calla has to allow. So she waits until Calla kisses her, in the attic, under dusty light, and then she finally lets her hands fall to Calla’s waist and the the small of her back, pulling her as close as she’s wanted for so long now.

“I’m going to die here,” Persephone tells her, unable to stop ruining the moment, unable to keep her green roots, her bone marrow, appropriately quiet.

“The hell you will,” says Calla, softly. “Maybe in one hundred years something will convince you to slow down.”

“Maybe,” agrees Persephone, though she knows better.

Calla forgets, but Persephone doesn’t. She thinks there is a world where she doesn’t look for Maura, a place in time where she decides that Maura can look after herself in the dark, underground. She can’t see what might happen then. Maybe Maura would die instead, maybe Calla would, maybe they would all live, maybe the world would end. The world where she dies is the easiest for her to see and the easiest for her to accept. Calla will live until she’s one hundred, too stubborn to die. Maura will live until BLue is grown up, a thousand rings inside her branches. Persephone will die, too young. But she has knitted socks for so many women. She has knitted a hat with a pom pom for a man who is also a tree. She has knitted herself into 300 Fox Way and the people it envelops. She has found a new magician and someone has been woken up to take her place. She has loved Calla Lily Johnson, on an exit ramp, in a motel, in a dusty attic, and that’s enough for her.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on [tumblr](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/post/143865939932) forever ago but i'm nervous about tumblrs permanence so. this ship is pretty ignored, which is pretty sad, but there you go. thank you for reading!


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